Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
They happened to be very bad examples of players who could fight, because they could not fight without giving a huge advantage to the other team.
That I agree with – mostly. However, players like that are few and far between. The other reason why teams used to employ goons is that the ability to fight on skates is not often coupled with the ability to play NHL-quality hockey. So you get teams using mooks like Gazdic or Peluso.
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Given a choice between having no fighter at all and having to ice a guy to play one shift, I choose the former. Especially when the situation that gives rise to this debate would have happened either way, and nothing would have changed afterwards either.
PS. Iggy fighting rarely gave a "huge advantage" to the other side I. My recollection. Chara either. In the former case, Iggy chose premium times to fight, when the emotion gained would supersede the fact he was off for 5 minutes. And he would also fight key guys often. Chara didn't actually have to fight much. He was that good.